Remember in Peace
by Jade Cadello
Summary: There is, in the heart of the California wilderness, a girl who can't remember her parents, but who can see into a man's mind and pluck out his deepest secrets. A girl who has flashes of a red-haired woman named Donna Noble. There is also a man, or not quite a man, with a long brown coat, a sonic screwdriver, and eyes that are so, so sad. This is their story.
1. Chapter 1

Elen sighed, leaning down to scrape a clump of mud from boots that had once been a dusty suede, but were now so covered in mud they looked like mud themselves.

"Typical" she muttered to herself before slinging her harp case up more securely around her shoulders and setting off again. The sun was already setting below clouds tinged pink and creamy yellow and the girl knew in her heart that she would never reach the mission by dark. Another night in the cold and damp of the redwood trees awaited her, but she plodded on, not willing to accept that fact until she was truly out of options.

"Stubborn, that's me. As if that's done me any good." She said, glancing around her. There had to be a ledge or something around here…anything to keep her dry.

"Home is behind, the world ahead." She whispered, quoting one of her favorite novels to the empty air.

"But home is very, very far, isn't it Helena?" A voice spoke from the shadows. Elen, or more accurately, Helena, jumped, letting out a muffled scream and spinning on her heels. Her meter-long saber was out of its scabbard before she had even thought of drawing it and she stood, feet braced shoulder width apart, scanning the surrounding trees for her adversary.

"Could you put that away please? I don't like weapons." A man appeared from behind one of the many trunks that lined the road. Well, at least it was marked a road on her map. In all honesty, Elen thought it was barely a trail, if that.

"Who are you?" Elen asked, trying her best to make her voice sound threatening, which is no mean feat when one is all of five feet tall.

The man wore a strange coat, very long and loose, hardly fashionable and his hair stuck out strangely from a face that, if not hansom, was attractive. Elen silently cursed herself for noticing. Attractive. Here she was with her sword pointing at an unknown man who had just appeared in the unlikeliest of places, and she was contemplating his physical attributes? Her mother always said she was a dreamer, her head more in the sky than on the ground.

"I said, who are you?" she asked again when she realized he hadn't bothered to answer.

"They call me the doctor." He replied, smiling the devil-may-care smile of a man who has no other motive than to enjoy himself. Hardly the sort of person Elen expected to meet out in the wilderness of California.

"Doctor who? Doctor of what?" Elen asked, wondering when she had last seen a doctor with such warm brown eyes…she shook her head, trying to break free from the hold his face seemed to have over her.

"Just the doctor," he spoke with the sort of calm laziness that said he didn't fear her in the least, wickedly sharp blade or no,

"Now tell me, what year is this?" he asked, eyebrows furrowed, glancing around with a ridiculous frown on his face. Elen rolled her eyes. Just her luck to run into a simpleton, attractive or no.

"1625 you idiot."

"Steady on!"

"Not my fault you've been living under a rock. Where are you from?" She lowered her sword but did not sheath it. If there was one thing she had learned from traversing the forests, it was that you never knew what form danger would take.

"I think the real question is where am I now." He looked speculatively around the trees, taking in each leaf and branch with the intelligent gaze of a scientist. "Hmm….sequoia sempervines, am I right?"

"What? Now you're talking gibberish? You aren't one of those philosophers, are you?" she studied him closely, looking for any trace of the self-importance or mental vacancy that usually accompanied philosophers. She found neither.

"Well…" He jerked his head in a non-committal sort of way, "If you'd like." Elen let out a snort that would have made her mother livid, if she had been alive to hear it. Sadness gripped her briefly, before she banished it to the back of her mind, choosing not to look at it until she could be alone to cry.

Still, her traitorous eyes let loose a single tear that she angrily brushed away, looking back at the strange man with hair that was, in truth, slightly insane now that she noticed it. He inhaled briefly,

"coastal air…possibly from the pacific ocean." He continued his analysis of the countryside, whipping out a pair of spectacles, apparently to examine the trees more closely.

"What kind of doctor did you say you were?" Elen asked. He didn't talk like any of the doctors she knew back home: vapid, self-satisfied men who lorded their schooling over their lessers. But neither did he seem like a philosopher to her eyes. No, this doctor was something altogether different, if only Elen could figure out what.


	2. Chapter 2

He turned towards her and, for some reason, the intensity of his eyes that she had once thought so warm made her want to look away, to drop her head from his, but she resisted. Deep brown, his eyes looked so old. Old and sad. But there was fire there too, a fire that never rested, a fire that whispered of some power unseen by Elen. A power unseen, but somehow familiar, like the shadow of a memory.

But Elen had power too, a power she had honed and molded over the years until it lay like a snake in her mind, just waiting to uncoil and delve into the unexplored depths of a person's thoughts. Her mother had called it mind reading, but Elen herself thought that was too crass a word for it, too all-encompassing when she could truly do so little.

Mind reading implied that she could delve into a person's thoughts and read whatever she wished, but the truth was much less glamorous. Since she had been able to talk, Elen had been able to talk with another voice, a hidden voice that could reach into a person's mind and ask what it wished without the person's conscious thoughts ever knowing what their subconscious revealed. Elen used that power now, opening her mind and calling out: _who are you?_

"Coastal land with an abundance of sequoia sempervines…interesting. Would we perhaps be in California?" Elen stared, her eyes blank. She had lost her grip on his thoughts when he had resumed his commentary, but she was still in a trance, stuck.

"Helena?" worry seemed to leak into his voice now. "Helena, can you hear me?"

Elen started, slinshoting back into the real world.

"I'm sorry, what did you say?" she tried to smile, with limited success. The doctor raised an eyebrow, staring deep into her eyes again. As before, she felt the urge to hide, but she stayed fast, calling up her power once again, asking silently: _Who are you?_ A moment later the response came and Elen smiled inwardly,

"What did you say, time-lord?" she spoke the name she had seen reflected on his features, repeated in his thoughts. The same ghost of familiarity glanced across her mind at the title, but she ignored it. He blinked, surprised. Elen grinned, glad to know something about this man, even if she didn't know what it meant.

"Time lord, isn't it? How can you be a lord of time?" she walked towards him, whispering to his mind, calling to his thoughts with her own.

"How did you know that?" His smile was gone, replaced by something close to incredulity.

"I see things," She replied simply, knowing better than to try and explain herself to him.

Sheathing her sword, she dug further, launching a myriad of questions into his subconscious mind. Elen thought briefly of her mother, how she had taught her how to use her power, then frowned. When she actually thought about it she couldn't remember her mother ever explaining the purposes of Elen's powers. It had never bothered her before, but when she truly thought back there were whole patches of her history that were vague and sketchy. Now, standing in the wilds of America, with the doctor before her, a niggling worry started to dig at her: why didn't she remember? Why couldn't she say who had taught her the use of her powers? Her mother had called it telepathy once, of that she was sure. Or was it her father?

She shook her head, shoving her confusion aside, and asked: _What is your name?_ To the depths of his mind. _Time lord. Child of gallifrey. The doctor_ was the reply. She frowned. None of those were names, certainly not real ones. Who was this man, and how could he hide his name? Elen concentrated harder, almost screaming, _what is your name?!_

Silence.

Elen stared. In all her years, she had never met anyone whose subconscious would not answer her queries.

"What is your name?" she asked, this time aloud. The doctor, or whoever he really was, was still staring at her.

"I told you, I'm the doctor. Now tell me how you know about time lords." She smiled,

"not a chance. Tell me your true name. All I see is time lord, child of Gallifrey, and that stupid doctor. What is your true name?"

At the word 'Galifrey,' his eyes opened wide with shock. "How do you know that?"

"How do you know my name?" she shot back, thinking of the way he had addressed her as 'Helena.' No one, no one called her by her full name, not since her mother's death. She was Elen and that was that. He just shrugged infuriatingly, the shoulders of his strange coat rising and falling as his bottom lip jutted out slightly,

"ah, simple telepathic reveal. You're Helena cooper, daughter of Verene and Harold Cooper. Your home is in London, England. You're twenty seven years old and you're on your way to the mission of San Francisco. Now why does all that sound familiar?" He frowned, staring off into the distance, lost in thought. Now it was her turn to gape.

"How-"

"you tell me, I'll tell you." He bargained, smiling at her impishly.


End file.
